Open Source

Arbitrage is one of the great opportunities which presents itself repeatedly in tech. In the nineties, something called international callback allowed am international caller to dial a number in the US and hang up – only to have a US-based call at a lower per-minute rate initiated on their behalf. Many hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on this market for hardware, software and service thanks to the arbitrage opportunity to save money on calling minutes.

VoIP continued this trend with even greater arbitrage and carriers spent billions on equipment to save money carrying phone calls on networks.

As telcos become software telcos, they are beginning to shed some of their bespoke, proprietary hardware in exchange for NFV software running on OTS computers from white box companies, Dell, HP, Cisco, etc. This move follows similar trends in many markets – thus we’ve seen opinion pieces about how software is eating the world.

It’s all about abstraction really. Software running on smartphones for example can replace fixed-function remote controls.

There are long-term trends in technology we all know are happening. Computers will get more powerful. More devices will be connected. Finally, the cloud will continue to become a more integral part of everything we do.

Panel to celebrate 20 years of IP communications/VoIP and discuss its future.

Next week at the 29th ITEXPO, I get the pleasure of moderating a panel with some super heavy hitters in the world of communications.

Craig Walker is the man behind Dialpad Communications – the dotcom sensation as well as GrandCentral Communications and UberConference. Basically, he was responsible for the communications systems Yahoo! and Google provide us today and more.

The following diagram is borrowed from the substantial cranial database of TMC partner in WebRTC Expo and UC University, Phil Edholm who was a major tech driver at Nortel and Avaya for decades. It was modified a bit by me.

The state of the PBX market can be summed up by this chart showing existing vendors getting squeezed between Microsoft coming from the OS down, Cisco coming from the router out and cloud and open-source coming from the bottom up in terms of pricing. In short, it is a tough time to be a PBX vendor.

As NFV and SDN usher in a new era of software telcos, there are just so many pieces which have to be put into place to enable solutions from disparate vendors to interoperate smoothly. Moreover, carriers are always looking for one throat to choke and NFV really opens up the carrier network is so many new ways that determining who is responsible for issues is more difficult.

Security has always been a major focus for operators. Indeed, when their networks were proprietary and thought to be bulletproof, it was determined a simple whistle distributed in a box of Captain Crunch cereal could give access to hackers.

The event has kicked off with a keynote presented by Steve Gleave - which has been preceded by a few well-produced videos. The idea so far is tying in the theme of the event "The brains of the new global network" with Steve's brain. The cast of characters behind the scenes show how they tinker with Steve's brain - he eventually comes out on stage on a Segway with Harley Davidson sound-effects.

Cloud-based contact center solutions have been priced fairly uniformly in the past… You pay per seat and feature. You want to add more people or features such as analytics, etc. and you pay more. Some vendors offer an all-inclusive solution of course meaning the only variable is the number of seats but regardless, the model has been fairly static for the past few decades – starting back in the nineties when the term ASP was what we used to describe the space.

The software telco(r)evolution representing the move from hardware to software is perhaps the biggest trend in the world of carrier telecom this decade. Whenever we see such disruption in a market, it becomes an opportunity for new entrants to displace existing companies. As you may recall, Sonus Networks and Acme Packet (now Oracle) were just a few companies which were born and prospered during the transition from circuit to packet switched carrier networks.

In the past I have written about Metaswitch and their software telco solutions through NFV or network functions virtualization and their open-source Project Clearwater initiative which allows a carrier to run IMS on standard servers for free.

In deciding not to exhibit at the Macworld events, CES and MWC, Apple has shown the world that it doesn’t need others to be successful. It can control the conversation far better when it holds its own press conferences which are invitation-only by design.

While this philosophy was very successful for a number of years, what Apple didn’t count on was the innovation gap between its products and the rest of the market closing to the point where a large-screen Android smartphone is actually preferable by the masses to the company’s iOS based phone offerings.

In other words – the “Apple attitude” we’re too sexy for your trade show was a great marketing concept for a number of years but now it seems like a bad choice.